Wednesday, March 24, 2010
The silent immortal invasion?
For as long as humanity has existed, we've fought death and tried to reverse aging by any means necessary. Every day you read about some food that has been found to be good for you or some remedy to help you live younger longer. Our bodies start to sag and we prop them back up, organs and limbs deteriorate and we try to fix them, but invariably no matter how hard we try and no matter how much smarter we feel we're getting about our health, we're dropping quicker than ever.
Who knew it was a jellyfish that would find the fountain of youth?
The turritopsi nutricula is a species of jellyfish that constantly undergoes a process called transdifferentiation, where one cell is transformed into another. Salamanders and sea stars do that to an extent, which is how they regrow limbs. This jellyfish, however, is able to reverse its aging process by reverting from its mature adult stage to its first stage of life and back over and over again. Theoretically this can happen indefinitely, rendering the animal biologically immortal. They are native to the Caribbean, but since there seems to be no natural end to its lifespan, they've spread and can now be found in oceans around the world.
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